What are Constraints?

Constraints are bid rules that can restricts bid on bid units (keyword + match type) to a specific range or position range to support in maximizing the objective*.

Constraint’s rules are an optional feature Advertising Cloud provides to support and maximize the objective. It can be applied to bid units associated with label.

What are Labels?

Labels are a group of entities under a common name for the purpose of reporting, management and constraining*.

Any entity such as keywords can have multiple labels. Also, any label can have multiple entities such as Keywords, ad groups, campaigns etc.

How to create a constraint?

A Label needs to be created first. To create a label, following steps are to be taken.

Create a label or select a pre-existing label and assign to entities. Click on Search> Campaigns> Labels> Create Labels. The following screen will appear:

Once the label is created by executing above steps, go to the entity level such as keywords in search tab and select the keywords by selecting the check box and assign those to the created label and save changes.

Once the above step is done, label tab should be visited to see the entities assigned to the label and also to create a constraint further.

To configure the constraint:

1. Click on the cog beside the label created.

2. Define Keyword level conditions. Multiple conditions can be applied for each constraint. These conditions can be evaluated as ‘And’ or ‘OR’.

3. Select constraint type from the drop down option and set values if applicable.

Bid & Position Constraint - It is a simplest type of constraint option in Advertising Cloud which allows to restrict optimizer’s keywords bids to a bid and position range specified

Variable Bid & Position Constraint - Create a single constraint that has different min/max bid and/or min/max position constraint values for each keyword associated to the constraint*

Context Sensitive Bid - Keywords can be bid to the average CPC of the portfolio, campaign, or ad group it belongs to*

Incremental Bidding - Bid keywords incrementally from their current bid to a target bid*

Search Engine Minimum Bid - This constraint will use the minimum CPC bids set by the search engines as the optimizer’s minimum bids*

Performance constraints - This constraint is based on bid unit’s performance

CPA Target

ROI Target

Margin Target

Bid Shift - The Bid Shift constraint allows you to shift bids up or down from the current optimized bid for all constrained keywords*

4. Define run period, outside that optimizer will have full control of bids.

5. After configuring the constraint, click on the ‘Save’ button.

6. Once the label has been constrained, the label will appear with an icon to show that it is a constrained label in the left navigation panel and in the label drop-list.

It is not always guaranteed by setting up the constraints such as in the case of the ‘Bid and Position’ constraint, the ad will appear at position 1 always. This could be of various reasons such as if the daily budget limit is reached then it will be difficult to maintain the constraint positioning for rest of the day. However, by setting up these constraints are actually prioritizing the rule in Advertising Cloud and directing technology to action accordingly.